Thursday, February 14, 2008

It doesn't matter where you live or how careful you are, there are predators everywhere. Rural areas, small everyone-knows-everyone towns, the big city.... For all the people who bitch and moan about kids being indoors and sedentary instead of running all over the neighborhood and in a park like "when I was a kid...", this is part of the reason. As parents we are afraid to let our kids roam with any kind of the freedom that we enjoyed as children because no one knows when or where the next predator will strike (Trois Riviere? Bridgewater?). Then when you think, ok...they are older now...they know how to look out for strangers etc...you get this kind of news... Bastards.http://thechronicleherald.ca/Front/9005548.html

I used to have total freedom as a kid too....would show up for mealtimes and the odd bathroom break....but then I just remembered that I grew up on air force bases...so how much trouble could we have gotten into? I think we're very protective of our children, maybe too much so with many things (like would a child seriously cut off their finger with a pair of scissors?) but things like are on the news terrify me too! And I'm not even a parent yet!!

Just my two cents, but I think that if there were more kids out and about, there would be fewer incidences of molestation, etc. The fact that kids can more easily be singled out now makes it easier, IMHO.

Educate kids to shout and scream if they're touched by a stranger. Educate them to look out for each other. I think this would help.

I hear Ya, Sully. You have a valid point. We do teach our kids not to talk to people they don't know and to keep their distance from people they don't know who try to talk to them...don't fall for the "I can't hear you, come closer" trick. To run, scream, and kick and fight if someone tries to grab them. The caveat is, though, that children are gullible, trusting, and easy to trick. There is no changing that. Case in Point: 9 yr old Cedrika Provencher was abducted from her Trois Rivieres neighborhood, where there were other children playing. Witnesses report last seeing her as saying she was helping a man find his dog.http://www.cbc.ca/canada/montreal/story/2007/08/01/qc-cedrika0801.html That was last July. She is still not accounted for. And a boy out west was abducted when the predator made his other abductee lure the kid. Luckily they were rescued alive, but not before damage was done. There are more lures and tricks than we can warn our kids about without terrifying them of the world at large. And this is just the "Stranger danger" stuff. What about the people that prey on children that trust them and know them as friends of the family or educators?

Stuff like this just makes me so sad. I just ache for the parents, you know? And the poor girl who found herself in such an awful situation. All we want is to protect our children, and when they're taken from you because of human malice, it's just sickening.